Zephyr
by Ryu0Tora
Summary: He didn't intend to leave for long, just a week or so. Maybe they would miss him, maybe not. However, the road was alluring and the longer Naruto walked it, the farther the winds carried him from home. Perhaps he would return someday, but for now—he would walk that winding road toward the dawn.


_Welp. Here's another fic. We really can't keep our heads focused on one idea. Thanks to MaethoMixup for betaing! Couldn't have done it without her. (No seriously, the improvement we had was amaezing)_

 **Welcome to our newest story! Which we may or may not commit to! Eh. Life's too short to focus on one thing. This fic is more of a whimsical one, where we wanted to explore the idea of Naruto leaving Konoha without hating it.**

 **This story was beta'ed by the wonderful Maethomixup, who turned a steaming pile of crap into gold!**

* * *

 **Hear the night toll in his breath**

It was a snap decision, based on little more than a whim.

He simply thought for a moment, " _What if I'm no longer here?_ " and the impulse was born, starting as an itch in his feet that longed to carry him past the walls hiding Konohagakure no Sato from the world.

Naruto was nothing if not a dreamer, however he had never once considered what was outside of his village until that day. He found himself standing in the middle of the street leading to the outer gate, road opened up to him with no one watching, distracted by shopping or walking their children to and from the local parks. Some of the villagers hung in small circles, smoking and chatting idly. Naruto was alone in his thoughts. It was a long and lonely road, disappearing into the horizon of a place Naruto had never seen before.

Once the idea took root in his mind, it festered. All he could think about was the backs of those mountains in the distance. The lands where the setting sun would shine over while Konoha was cast in nightfall was.

His days of solitude would find him wandering back to the same road, staring at nothing and everything. He would strain his eyes to see what laid beyond the tall trees and thick foliage, climbing to the top of the tallest landmark just to watch the sunset. The sky would brighten for its final moments before darkness came and still Naruto would remain there as the stars pricked the gloom with a new light, one by one. It caused the forests surrounding him to look silvery. He could see the trees separated in a neat line where the village walls circled around.

Even farther than that were the mountains, fading from sight as the night grew colder and could imagine himself out there, an inexplicable tug in his gut that nearly sent him stumbling forward toward the landscape, away from Konoha and the sadness it kept him in.

A thrill rushed through his veins at the thought of being surrounded by nothing but nature, risking himself in unfamiliar territory. When he became a shinobi, he would only be allowed to leave the village on missions, and even then he would most likely stick to the towns and populated areas.

What a better time to adventure than before he enrolled at the Academy?

Of course, most normal seven-year-olds wouldn't think about leaving their homes on a mere whim. Most wouldn't climb a tree as tall as the ones Naruto did, and they certainly wouldn't do it every dawn and dusk to watch the sun rise and fall.

So there he was, a child with fiery eyes too old for his face, standing before that road again. His backpack was stuffed full and he was dressed warmly. He had no plan, no end goal, and he wasn't even sure where the path out of Konoha would take him. The idea was harebrained and spur of the moment, but he wasn't too concerned. It wasn't as though he was going to be away for a long period of time, after all. Just a week or so to get the wanderer's itch out of his system.

Three weeks later and Naruto was at the top of a large mountain.

The mountain was mostly bald on one side, jagged boulders protruding from the rich soil, and the few trees that grew were bright green with moss. Naruto's clothes were ragged and torn from taking more abuse than they ever had in his short life.

He knelt by a spring, allowing pure and cold water to flow into his canteen. He ran out of the supplies he had brought with him within two days and blew through the food even faster. Other than beginning to develop wiry and lean muscle underneath his vanishing baby pudge, he hadn't changed much. The backpack he had left the village with had fallen apart two weeks ago. The pack he carried now he had bought from what little funds he had taken with him.

After drinking his fill of water—and filling the canteen again—he marched down the mountainside. He learned quickly that setting up camp on the top of a mountain was a bad idea. Wind was a deadly force and more than once he had to hastily relocate to save his tent.

Rather than heading straight to his campsite, he winded through the forest in search of anything edible. Food was hard to come by, foraging being the easiest way for him to collect enough to keep himself sustained. He could have used traps, similar to the pranks he used to pull in the village, but even if he managed to catch an animal, he would need fire to cook it. There was no way he could simply buy food, since the Sandaime wasn't exactly mailing him weekly allowances anymore, and his funds were paltry even before he left.

Finding food was still a difficult task and most of the time, Naruto went to bed with an empty stomach. It was miserable on those nights, a gnawing hunger that nearly kept him awake until the early hours of dawn. For a brief moment, it occurred to him that returning would be easier. It was the logical choice to make, starving and freezing as he was. And yet—

Yet, the thought of walking down a path he had already trodden was very close to depressing.

He had taken two steps toward Konoha—and then turned and started toward Water Country.

Uzumaki Naruto wasn't ready to return to Konoha. Not for a while.

 _I'm gonna do a tour of the different countries_ , Naruto thought. _First, Water. . . . Then maybe Earth . . . and then Lightning . . ._

He wasn't sure if he wanted to travel to Wind Country, considering the fact that it was a desert. While he had picked up on some useful survival skills during his couple weeks on his own, he wasn't confident enough to take on that environment. It put a wrench in his plans of touring the Elemental Continent as a whole, though. He wanted to explore everything before returning to Konoha in order to enroll in the Academy.

It wouldn't take him longer than a year or two to stop his feet from moving toward the unknown.

Naruto didn't put much more thought behind his plans as he continued on toward his destination. There wasn't much time while he was on the road, half traveling and half scavenging for something to eat, and the majority of his deep thinking was spent right before he went to bed. That wasn't counting visiting towns, meeting the people living in them (they were always worried to see a child alone), and, finally, _building a fire_.

Never had Naruto had such a difficult time in his life than when he tried to start a fire for the first time. Even with a flint, it was nerve wracking. He needed kindling wood, and then something that was dry enough to catch flame the instant the sparks flew, and often times the leaves just didn't do it.

When he did finally succeed, the flash of joy he felt made up for all the nerve-wracking and hair-pulling issues had suffered. He had sat back, grinning like a fool and staring into the dancing flames. For the first time, Naruto felt triumph.

He had jumped around, punching and kicking at the air, for a good five minutes before he settled down again. If anyone had been watching, they would have thought he had lost his mind-but there was no one, and Naruto was free to enjoy his victory away from condescending eyes.

With fire, he could now cook warm meals. That meant he could hunt – and hunt he did. Naruto's nose had always been sensitive, even if it wasn't quite as much as the loud Inuzuka boy who bullied him on the playground. He could sniff out animal trails, which made it fairly simple to find his prey.

The real issue came from actually killing the animal. Naruto had never killed anything before and it hadn't occurred to him until he finally caught it that he would have to end the creature's life to eat it. Staring into the eyes of a small rabbit, he realized he had never actually wanted to snuff out the fire lurking in there. The life of a shinobi was one of killing, of pushing one's heart away and forging an iron will, but Naruto hesitated. The rabbit never did anything to warrant death, other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He sat frozen, knife held above his head and his gaze transfixed onto the innocent critter before him.

During his moment of indecision, the rabbit managed to wriggle from his grasp and disappear into the underbrush. That night Naruto was wracked with intense hunger pains and endured a restless sleep. The morning after was no better.

Two days later, he celebrated First Meat day. Even if the animal had done nothing to deserve death, neither did Naruto deserve to starve. He would weaken and die without food, and then it would be Naruto who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He would stare up into the eyes of a predator, but that creature would already know the weight of survival. There would be no mercy.

Naruto would be eaten and there would be no one around to know. He would die alone and unmourned.

Those thoughts plagued him the rest of the way into Water Country, until he was skirting the edge of Kirigakure. The forests turned sparser and filled with a heavy fog, eternally hanging over the canopies and barring the heat of day. The ground was a blanket of mosses and ferns, unlike the thick underbrush of Fire Country, damp from an ever-present dew and nearly daily showers.

Sun broke through the clouds maybe once every couple weeks, but aside from those rare times, it was cool, wet, and gloomy. It was so different from what he was used to that at first it took his breath away. Now that the winter months were setting in though, he realized it would have been been better to head for the warmth of Wind Country. He shouldn't have let the whole scary, desert thing deter him.

Underweight and malnourished, Naruto was about as threatening as a mouse by this point. That was probably the reason he had managed to get into Kirigakure so easily. His time in the wilds hadn't been forgiving. Most of the clothes he had started with were gone, replaced with articles of clothing he had _acquired_ while one the road.

He didn't approve of stealing, but he had _really_ needed clothing. He doubted the person they belonged to would miss the outfits anyway. Perhaps he should have returned to Konoha when he had to resort to such underhanded deeds to survive. Even so, he couldn't bring himself to end his journey.

When Naruto stepped foot into Kirigakure no Sato, it had been six months since he left Konoha.

The only thing that had grown in that time was his hair, hanging just above his shoulders in untameable spikes that made him look like a porcupine. Despite his stunted height and having gotten a scrawny build, Naruto thought his hair was a good enough compensation. It looked cool and was one of the few vanities he could afford to have.

Being in a foreign Hidden Village was strange for him. Kirigakure looked nothing like his home. The bright and colorful hodgepodge of buildings and streets was the opposite to the solemn, yet majestic structures that made up Kiri. Several waterways flowed through the village, providing the residents here with water. The ninja populace were predominantly suiton-users, he had discovered through the hushed chatter on the streets, so it would give them an advantage if their village was under attack.

It was along one of those waterways that Naruto saw him.

Down an alley, a boy was rifling through a couple garbage cans, tossing aside inedible things. He was skin and bones, dressed in threadbare nightwear that might, at one point in the past, have been white. His trousers were in a similar state and he was barefoot.

Naruto belatedly realized he had stopped walking. He blinked at the boy from behind his curtain of unruly hair, watching idly. Not so long ago, he would have just walked over and offered the boy a share of his food. He would have bounded over with a grin and words of companionship, but he had learned the hard way that some homeless people hated handouts. He was still a little traumatized, even after so many months on his own.

A dog scampered over-the boy kicked it away. There was no anger or ill-intent in the action. There didn't seem to be much of anything in his dull and listless eyes as he watched the dog leave before returning his attention to the garbage.

Naruto was stood in the alleyway, analyzing the other. From the way he looked, he probably wouldn't last the winter. He was even more underfed than Naruto and he could see that under the oversized shirt, the boy's ribs were protruding sharply. There was no fire in his eyes, no will to survive, forcibly reminding Naruto of the rabbit he caught. The rabbit had possessed more of a purpose than the boy did. If the boy had really wanted to live, he wouldn't have merely scared off that dog.

It had been a long time since he had considered dogs as companions.

"You know," said Naruto, startling the boy so badly he dropped his salvaged food, "It's easier to find food and water in the forest."

Naruto's voice was rusty from lack of use and it nearly shocked himself.

The boy stared at him uncomprehendingly.

"The food probably even tastes better," he added, throwing a thinly veiled look of disgust at the half-eaten egg roll. "Let me tell you, venison is delicious. Deer are kind of hard to catch off guard, but they're yummy."

No reply.

"Ah, well . . ." Naruto's voice faltered. It had been so long since he had talked to anyone, he wasn't entirely sure what to say anymore. He remembered a seemingly unending stream of words he was able to spout, back when he lived in Konoha. For the life of him, he couldn't recall what he used to say.

"The road's lonely, y'know?" he said hesitantly. He hadn't forgotten those past experiences with people who didn't want friends or conversation, but something in the dimness of the boy's eyes spurned him to try. "If you want something to eat, I've got plenty. Deer have a lot of meat and there's only one of me."

Actually, he didn't have a lot on him at the moment. Deer didn't seem to hang around Kiri, nor did many other animals. Food was scarce, even in the forests.

"I have nothing to give," said the boy.

There was a startling absence of wariness in his tone. Naruto wracked his mind for something to say before a faint smile pulled at the boy's lips.

"Your eyes . . ." started the boy.

He no longer looked hollow or lifeless.

"They're just like mine," he said. "You no longer have a purpose."

Naruto's breath caught in his throat.

 _A purpose_.

He had never truly questioned what drove him to leave his village, the place he was born in and raised most of his short life. He never wondered much about what kept him wandering the wide and lonely roads, nor had he ever thought about what prevented him from returning.

 _He had no purpose there_.

It was the simplest answer, so why hadn't he realized it?

Naruto had been alone in Konoha and, even more than that, desperately lonely. When he reached and no one else did the same, he had simply moved on. He had left and searched, unconsciously, for a new purpose. For a second, Naruto wondered if he would have latched onto some other grand dream in order to give his life meaning, had he stayed in Konoha longer.

If there was one thing the road hadn't given him, it was a reason to live. He had learned the instinct of survival, but that wasn't the same as , Naruto thought to himself, what kind of purpose could he have?

He didn't know if the road could offer him a reason.

The boy watched him with steady, brown eyes. Not lifeless, not empty, not any of the things Naruto had thought him to be previously. Naruto, who had crossed that alley simply to offer the boy food, found himself holding onto something much more precious. It was something given to him out of the kindness of the boy's heart, who had nothing of his own and struggled day by day just to live.

Naruto cracked a smile, the first in a long while.

"I think we'd make good friends," he said.

The boy's expression went wide, bright and earnest.

"You think?" he asked.

Naruto nodded.

"Yeah. But the road's not easy. It's hard and unforgiving . . ." Naruto's voice trailed off.

"What does that freedom feel like?"

A single visible blue eye blinked.

"Freedom?"

He thought back on his travels, from the first time he had lit a fire to his first taste of wild-caught meat.

"It's . . . amazing," he said. "And . . . untamed. Easily lost, but worth holding onto."

"It sounds nice," said the boy, glancing back at the alley and the garbage cans he had been pawing through only minutes ago.

A whim, a split-second decision-that was all it ever took. It had carried him away from Konoha, through the hills and trees of the wilds, and had swept him away to this land of mist and water. Now, it was giving him a friend.

"Why don't you come with me?"

The boy's mouth parted in surprise.

"Come with . . ? But, I wouldn't be of any use," he said sadly, his gaze fixed on the ground. "I'm nothing."

Naruto grinned, a stiff and unfamiliar expression, but real and happy.

"You're not nothing!" There was fire burning inside of him that he hadn't even known almost went out. "You made me realize just how lonely I was! I know why I've felt so . . . so bad, lately. I don't want to go back, but I was unsure about going forward, and you've given me something that's immeasurable! That's not nothing at all."

He took a deep breath, his eyes flinty with determination.

"You should definitely come with me," he declared. "This place has nothing to offer us, I realize that now. I think I'm going to Iwa next. What do you say?"

The boy was silent for several long, torturous seconds. Just when Naruto was certain he wasn't going to reply, he spoke.

"My name is Haku," he said, smiling. "Iwa sounds nice."

So, with their eyes set on Iwa, they set off. Neither of them truly knew where the road would take them, but it was the path they chose to walk and they would never stray.

"Let's go!"


End file.
